ABSTRACT
Within our lifetimes the advances in the exact formulation and analysis of what constitutes rational behavior have been greater, than in the whole of history. Rationality is more than a matter of acting so as to secure the values pursued. Theories of rationality inevitably introduce gross simplifications. Human values, in the concrete, are indefinitely extensible, both as to their causes and their effects. For one thing, decisions are often not even identified as such, and so tend to elude conscious aspirations to rationality. Administration, for instance, is not an inert form encasing a fixed content of policy; the executive and judicial functions are inescapably also legislative. The author believes that a better fix on the locus of political decisions may contribute to making them more rational. Though the focus must be on the individual, plainly the rationality of decisions is also very much a matter of social patterns.
